State, federal mandates call for Buena Vista High School restructuring

BUENA VISTA TWP. — State officials say now’s the time for Buena Vista School District leaders to make plans to restructure Buena Vista High School because of its repeated failure to meet federal standards for improvement.

District leaders, however, are mum on what — if anything — they’re doing to comply.

The school, 3945 E. Holland, has about 360 students andis the only school in the Great Lakes Bay Region facing a requirement to restructure. It hasn’t made “adequate yearly progress” for five consecutive years.

AYP, a cornerstone of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, is determined at the high-school level in Michigan by measuring year-to-year student achievement on Michigan Merit Examination scores, among other factors.

Buena Vista High School’s dropout rate was 19.6 percent in 2009, while its graduation rate — the percentage of students obtaining a diploma within four years — was 56.7 percent, according to state statistics.

Among 11th-graders, 5.9 percent tested proficient in math on the Michigan Merit Exam in 2009. In English/language arts, 15.4 percent were proficient, according to the state.

Late last year, Buena Vista High appeared on the state Department of Education’s “draft” list of the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools. New state laws approved earlier this year “strengthen the state’s authority to intervene in persistently low-achieving schools,” according to the state’s “Race to the Top II” application for $400 million in federal money.

Options listed in the new laws include replacing Buena Vista High Principal Rita Cheek, closing the school and reopening it as a charter school, or changing the school’s curriculum and instruction methods, said Sharif M. Shakrani, a professor in Michigan State University’s College of Education.

“My prediction is that something will be done at that school by this fall, but what it is, I don’t know,” Shakrani said. “The history, in Michigan, has not been one with a whole lot of meaningful restructuring of schools.

“There has not been a single school that has been closed because of (poor) academic achievement.”

Buena Vista Superintendent Sharron Jenkins Norman has failed to return numerous phone calls from The Saginaw News; she canceled a meeting to discuss the issue of restructuring.

Similarly, The Saginaw News has been unable to reach Cheek and various State Department of Education personnel for comment about what’s being done to restructure Buena Vista High.

A district teacher, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation by district leaders, said administrators have told teachers the district must develop a restructuring plan.

“They’ve said they have to come up with some kind of plan,” the teacher said. “But they haven’t said what it is.”

There’s also the question of who will implement restructuring in low-performing schools, including Buena Vista High, and where the money will come from to pay such personnel, Shakrani said.

Shakrani said Education Department leaders have asked legislators to hire a deputy superintendent, along with a number of other new state employees under that deputy, to oversee the reform of failing schools. Legislators haven’t approved the money for the hires, he said.

“This is a contentious issue,” he said. “I believe the state could use federal money to pay for these employees, but state law says you cannot hire a state employee without approval of the Legislature, so even though the money may be coming from another source, legislators still have to approve the restructuring of the department, which they haven’t done, though at least they have a defined plan.”

State Department of Education leaders have applied for $400 million in federal money offered through the “Race to the Top” education-reform program. Forty-eight states have applied for the funds, and 16 will be chosen later this summer to receive money, according to Shakrani.

State requirements — existing before legislators passed new laws for education reform this year — give Buena Vista High five restructuring options. They are:

• Reopen the high school as a charter school

• Turn over school operations to the state

• Contract with an outside organization to run the school

• Replace all or most of the school staff “who are relevant to the failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress”

• Restructure the school’s “governance arrangement” to make fundamental reforms

Shakrani said that in the past, state officials have simply asked leaders of a failing school to change curriculum.

Before taking any action, Buena Vista leaders must notify parents and teachers that the school has been identified for restructuring and give them the chance to help develop the restructuring plan.

The Saginaw News could not determine whether parents have been notified.

Board of Education member Randy Jackson said the question of how Buena Vista will restructure its high school is “a huge question right now, and we’re waiting on information from the state.” Jackson, one of three new board members appointed to the board this year, said he hopes to keep the state from taking over operation of the high school.

“We don’t want the state to have to come in and do a job that we should be able to do,” he said.

Passage of the new state education-reform laws earlier this year also could have consequences for Buena Vista High, said Jan Ellis, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.

If the high school ends up on the final list of the lowest-performing 5 percent of high schools in Michigan, “it will be important because the ‘Race to the Top’ legislation and the new federal school-improvement grants will target those schools for intensive intervention, and they’re going to require certain things that are above and beyond what is currently required,” Ellis said.

Shakrani said the unknowns — whether the state receives the $400 million in federal money to reform schools, whether a cadre of state school-reform specialists is hired, and how the state implements new education-reform laws — should command the attention of Buena Vista school leaders.

“I would be very worried if I were the high school principal,” Shakrani said. “If the state takes over the school, they will put a new structure in place, but I would be worried more about not knowing what’s going to happen.

“I have to plan ahead, and if state officials don’t give me the information until Aug. 28, that puts me in a huge predicament.”